


long may we grow

by handschuhmaus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hufflepuff & Slytherin Inter-House Friendships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 12:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20447414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: Young Severus Snape contrives to be Sorted into Hufflepuff House. Pomona Sprout isprotectiveof her badgers...





	long may we grow

It was an unlikely series of events that began it. Dumbledore had reacted badly to some food he had tried and so Horace Slughorn had been waylaid from his intended destination into the new Deputy Headmistress’s office. Oh, he knew Minerva McGonagall, even visited her office occasionally, but he wouldn’t have been there today under any other circumstances, and would not have seen the letter, at a split in the stack about to be sent out, marked ‘Snape’. It sounded familiar, at any rate, or at least--sort of familiar.

And he said, moving the upper layers of letters away, “I think I’ll go on a home visit.” 

“It doesn’t say he’s Muggleborn,” Minerva noted, objected really, a sour expression on her face. But that was probably the stress of sending out all the letters.

“All the same,” Slughorn said, lacing his words with a rarely seen core of steel, “I think I’ll go on a home visit.”

* * *

The place was _dismal_. Muggle poverty, compared to genteel wizarding poverty, seemed so bleak. Slughorn checked the number again and then knocked on the grimy door.

Yes. He had been correct, this was Eileen Prince. But what a difference! He knew other yearmates of hers who were still radiant witches and lively conversational partners. Eileen Snape was worn and tired and old before her time.

“Professor Slughorn,” she greeted wearily, “what a surprise.” Even that sounded pained.

“Yes, well, your son’ll be coming to Hogwarts.”

“If--” Eileen began, and then seemed to think better of it. “Won’t you come in, even if I can’t offer you tea--the stove’s broke?”

Horace said, magnanimously “I do want to meet your son.” 

“He’ll be upstairs--” Eileen said, and moved out of the doorway that Horace could come in. But she was wrong about her son; the pale and grimy boy, looking like some creature out of a cave save for the curtains of black hair draping limply around his face, was directly behind her. 

Slughorn could not help an inward frown. Much as it was his intent to welcome Eileen’s son to Hogwarts, he could not fathom the motivation that would lead her to stay here, in this--this _hovel_, trying to raise the next generation of Princes--oh, that was right, knowing Victoire (who’d be… Eileen’s aunt), the boy, if half Muggle, wouldn’t count, by the families standards. Reflexively he grit his teeth at the sort of fair-weather loyalty that rejected so thoroughly its own, simply for the Muggle connection.

(Horace Slughorn was not, actually, good at keeping his emotions off his face.)

“Are you excited for Hogwarts, young man?” First meetings were always a little awkward, especially for the children who had some connection to the Muggle world and had not yet adjusted to the idea that the Wizarding world had different standards. There weren’t many out and out Muggleborns in Slytherin, not now, not after Grindlewald, but there were enough half bloods, like this ...Severus Snape (what a strange and severe name!), for it to be an issue.

“Maybe,” the boy said, very quietly, and oh dear, they’d _have_ to do something about the boy’s speech. Like the Gyrfalcon play, about the diction wizard and the flower seller he made into a proper young woman. Even in that single word the accent was _dire_.

* * *

Severus Snape had, in fact, taken an instant disliking to Horace Slughorn. Had they not met in the embarrassment of Snape’s home surroundings, a house haunted by the echoes of a hundred drunken yells, it might have been better.

But in that anger-torn house, Severus Snape had learned, after a fashion, to read people, and he did not like what he had read in Slughorn’s voice, in his expressions, even in the way he held himself when invited into the home. If he had had more perspective, he might have imagined that Slughorn was simply (as he was) snobbish and uncomfortable in less than plush surroundings. As it was, he could only have said that Horace Slughorn did not like him (In fact, as we have seen, it was not personal, and Slughorn hoped to, one day, like him--but as is, he stretched the Potions Master’s empathy beyond the masking point.) 

“Going to be in Slytherin House like your mum?” Slughorn asked, in a fake and patronizing tone, the tone, in fact, that Severus imagined his unknown grandparents would use on him, thanks to the telly. 

“I wouldn’t know,” Severus answered him, in best imitation of his mother’s first accent, the one that made her (or him) stick out like the proverbial sore thumb on the streets of a Northern factory town.

And like that it was decided: because Severus Snape did not like Slughorn and because Slughorn thought he should be in Slytherin (was probably, from what Mum had said, head of that house), Severus Snape thought then and there that, if he could possibly help it, he would not go to Slytherin House. 

“You’ll need books,” Slughorn said, pointing out the obvious, and with a patronizing tone to the statement, as if besides being too imbecilic, in his mind, to realize _that_, they were so poor they probably couldn’t get them. Well. They weren’t rich, (and the Princes _had_ already rejected them, Eileen and Severus (and Tobias, but--that didn’t bear mentioning)) but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t manage _potions_ books.

* * *

A few weeks later, which is both a lifetime and a blink to an eleven year old, all the arrangements had been deftly arranged, more or less, and “Evans, Lily” had been sent to Gryffindor, and Severus didn’t care about anyone else up until…

“SNAPE, SEVERUS!” Professor ...McGonagall (not one of Mum’s professors) shouted, with magically enhanced voice. 

“_What have we here?_” the Sorting Hat asked into his head, and with only just enough levity that the stock phrase didn’t sting...much.

“I don’t want to be in Slytherin under Slughorn,” Severus informed the hat, first off. It seemed best policy, dealing with semi(?)-sentient headwear, to be clear about one’s preferences.

“Your family have been Slytherins for a long time,” the Hat reminded him.

“That doesn’t matter. Mum told me she didn’t mind, and none of the rest of them care.”

“You could ...go to Ravenclaw,” the Hat said, but not as if it were quite recommending the house. Ravenclaw did not sound bad, exactly, to Severus, but then he wasn’t sure any of the three he hadn’t already predisposed himself against had anything to recommend them, either.

Unbeknownst to Severus, the Hat was carrying out a complex and fuzzy calculus in what passed for its brain, trying to predict how well the other house choices would suit the child. Gryffindor seemed both unlikely and ill-advised; without Slytherin in the running, there was not frankly a great deal to bias this boy towards one in particular of Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. Then the Hat thought of Pomona Sprout, and the decision was made.

“HUFFLEPUFF!”


End file.
